Using knowledge for good

The way I see it, last week's post on "The Gatherer-Hunter Diet" leaves a huge question looming. Even if one agrees with my two basic assumptions (1: that there is in fact a "gatherer-hunter" diet pattern that is internally coherent & sufficiently unique from agricultural diet patterns; and 2: that the scientific data showing rapidly deteriorating health status after agriculture are painting an accurate picture & are related to the changes in diet vs. other factors) we are still left with what I consider a big dilemma:

What on earth do we do about that knowledge? We no longer live in small, nomadic tribes, with the skills and knowledge necessary to gather and hunt, and the vastness of human population on earth (7 billion instead of averaging 100,000) means we could never go back to hunting & gathering on any meaningful scale.

Worse, what if 7 billion people decided to mimic the "optimal diet" seen in gatherer-hunters? According to the EPA, "Globally, ruminant livestock produce about 80 million metric tons of methane annually, accounting for about 28% of global methane emissions from human-related activities."  And all industrially-produced animal products have additional ethical concerns, including animal cruelty and antibiotic overuse.  If we continue to look to industry to provide our animal protein, the impact of 7 billion people drastically reducing their grain consumption would have a large and terrible impact indeed.

I was surprised to find Amazon.com has a large selection of "Paleo" cookbooks, which I have no interest in purchasing myself so I can't be sure what meats they feature. If for some reason they're telling you to go to the grocery store and pick up a shrink-wrapped package of ribeye but skip the dinner roll, it would seem a devastatingly misguided, if well-intentioned, plan to regain our primal well-being. (If anyone with experience with these cookbooks wants to tell me if I'm way off on my packaged-supermarket-meat assumption, please do!)

In my opinion, the more we learn about the lifestyle humans thrived under for hundreds of thousands of years, the more questions we must ask ourselves about how to use that knowledge for good. We will undoubtedly need to eat more grain than was eaten our first 100,000 years, because grains are a cornerstone of feeding dense populations, but we can balance whole grains with other foods, instead of making them the foundation of our "pyramid." For ethical protein, maybe the more adventurous among us will try insects (healthy & environmentally friendly!).  Some may find that raising rabbits and chickens in their backyard feels right. For others it may be a low-grain flexitarianism that focuses on nuts and beans plus the occasional humanely-raised meat/eggs for protein. Seafood seems a sustainability minefield, but with careful research and a willingness to tread off the beaten path, there are options that are healthy and green, too. And we can all stand to learn enough locally-specific botany that we could safely forage for wild edibles in addition to supporting local pesticide-free farmers. What might work for you?